After patients are released from a hospital, they may still require health monitoring. In cases where this monitoring is not done, complications may arise and patients may return to the emergency room when the issue has escalated to a noticeable point. In many cases these complications are preventable and the escalation can be avoided if the patient's health is monitored regularly during the first several months after release. Currently, this monitoring is accomplished by the health care provider sending personnel to the home of the patient or by requiring the patient to make frequent visits to a healthcare provider. Although the current system is effective in preventing some complications, this system is limited by the frequency at which the health care provider can monitor the patient. Often, personnel limitations prevent the health care provider from checking on a patient more than a few times a week. Complications may arise between visits that could be avoided with more frequent health monitoring.
In addition to improving the patient's quality of service, this approach is also more practical in terms of reducing overall medical costs. In some cases, if a patient is readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of discharge, the hospital is liable for any additional costs incurred because it failed to provide adequate service. Hence, doing no monitoring of discharged patients can incur large costs for the health care provider. As a result, health care providers make an effort to amend this by performing periodic assessments of the discharged patients' health by sending a healthcare professional to the patient's home.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a remote monitoring system that would reduce the load and cost for the health care provider as it would only need to perform spot checks and visits when the remote monitoring system alerted them of a need.